Denzel Washington says upbringing and a lack of father figures are to blame for many young men ending up in jail.

The Oscar winner, 62, was speaking at the premiere of his latest film, Roman J. Israel, Esq., in which he stars as an idealistic defense attorney whose life is upended when his partner, the firm’s front man, dies.

Asked if the film made him feel more cynical about the justice system, the star replied: ‘It starts at home.’

Speaking to NY Daily News, he added: ‘It starts with how you raise your children. If a young man doesn’t have a father figure, he’ll go find a father figure.

‘So you know I can’t blame the system. It’s unfortunate that we make such easy work for them.’

In an earlier interview, the actor touched upon some of his own experiences growing up.

‘I grew up with guys who did decades (in prison) and it had as much to do with their fathers not being in their lives as it did to do with any system,’ he told Reuters. DailyMail

“For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.” Romans 8:14

Rita Chaima radiates with joy. When you see her face, you can tell she’s filled with deep happiness and contentment.

But that’s the opposite of the way she used to feel. Chaima was raised a Muslim, and from an early age she struggled with suicidal depression.

She tells her powerful story in a new documentary called “In His Footsteps” by a ministry called The Last Reformation.

“I just saw a cruel world and I didn’t want to be a part of it,” she recalls.

Chaima says she tried to kill herself three times. “I was doing drugs, I was smoking, I was smoking anything … I just wanted to destroy myself.”

At one point she became so angry that she made up her mind to join ISIS in Syria.

“I hated people who weren’t Muslim. I wanted to kill them,” she says.

The videos by ISIS inspired her. “I loved to see them bleeding. I was seeing videos of decapitation and loved it.”

But then something else happened. Her mom got a bunch of free books for her, and there was a Bible among them. That’s when Chaima met Jesus.

“I started to read the Bible to prove to Christians that they were wrong,” she says. “But I was wrong! And the grace of Jesus Christ started to touch me.”

“I was reading things like ‘pray for your enemies,’ ‘love them,’ and I was someone who wanted to kill them.”

“Intellectually I didn’t want to accept Jesus, but Jesus started to do a work in my heart,” she says.

She couldn’t resist the love of Jesus anymore, so she decided to follow Him.

When she told her family what she had done, they rejected her. She says they stopped talking to her, and for months she was alone in her room. “It was like a prison.”

She says in the past, depression would have overtaken her. But not this time. She started to read the Bible a lot. “Jesus was there with me. He was encouraging me. The Holy Spirit was really there. I felt it, I knew it.”

Her Muslim family has now totally abandoned her, but her story doesn’t end there.

When it was time for Chaima to be baptized, something supernatural happened.

“I don’t even remember what I did. I had to see the video of my baptism. I was completely crazy, the demon was crazy, it wasn’t me. I kicked Jon. He baptized me. I kicked him.”

But as she flailed and screamed, Jon continued to minister over her, telling the demon to go until peace finally came over her body. She was finally set free and baptized in the Holy Spirit.

“After the baptism I felt like the heavy weight completely disappeared. And I was so excited to go and make disciples,” she said.

“I started to want to talk about Jesus to everyone, even to the people who led me to terrorism. I wanted to go and see them, tell them that they are wrong, and that love is waiting for them.”

And that’s just what she now does, traveling with Gospel minister Peter Ahlman and other Christians, she shares her testimony wherever she goes. CBN News

some other 20th century barriers are still extant. And new ones are being erected all over the world at steady pace.

Le Point, a French right-of-center weekly, has published a comprehensive map in this respect. According to it, and other documents, the oldest existing barriers are the outcome of wars of aggression.

The “demilitarized zone” (DMZ) between North and South Korea — in fact, one of the most militarized fences in the world — was created in 1953 as part of the armistice agreement that ended a three-year war initiated by the Communist North Korean regime. The 180-kilometer long Attila that separates the Muslim-Turkish populated Northern Cyprus from the Christian-Greek populated southern Republic of Cyprus was unilaterally set up by Turkey after it invaded the Mediterranean island in 1975.

The Sand Wall, a 2720-kilometer barrier put in place between 1980 and 1987 and manned by 100,000 Moroccan soldiers, marked Morocco’s 1975 unilateral annexation of the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara.

Likewise, the 120-kilometer fence on the Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Lebanese borders and the 51-kilometer fence on the Israeli-Gazan line were set up in the wake of repeated aggressions by Arab states or terrorist organizations against the Jewish State from 1948 to 2014. The almost 3000-kilometer fence on the Indian-Pakistani border is the result of the many wars and skirmishes involving the two South Asian nations since 1947.

Recent barriers built to prevent large-scale terrorist

However, the more recent barriers were built or are being built within a very different context. Their main purpose is to prevent large-scale terrorist infiltrations or to monitor mass migrations.

The largest of them are to be found in the Islamic world. This should not come as a surprise, since many Islamic countries are hotbeds of competing jihadist movements or migratory pools or both.

There is a 3300-kilometer wall between secular but Hindu-dominated India and Muslim Bangladesh. Some 2700 kilometers of walls surround Uzbekistan, 1400 kilometers lie on Saudi Arabia’s borders, 1200 kilometers on Iran’s Eastern borders, and 700 kilometers on Oman’s borders. Jordan is completing a 500-kilometer fence on its Syrian and Iraqi borders; Tunisia a 200-kilometer fence along its Libyan border.

Border Security in the West

Many barriers have been recently implemented in Europe, essentially to curb mass immigration from Muslim countries: see the current borders of Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Hungary, Slovenia, and even Norway. A 3-kilometer fence has been built at Calais in northern France around the terminal of Eurostar, the French-British underwater high-speed train tunnel.

However, enlightened citizens in Western democracies usually feel uncomfortable about wall-building — especially when their own countries are concerned.

Individual freedom and individual achievement are the Western world’s most cherished values: it is all the more difficult to admit that they have a dark side, that more freedom to pursue happiness may entail more freedom for evil people to follow their evil ways. That mass immigration without acculturation may bring about about societal disruption, with equally bad consequences for the autochthonous population and the newcomers.

In 2015, Bishop Eva Brune wanted to remove Christian Symbols from the Seamen’s Church in Stockholm’s eastern dockyards. To make it more inviting to all the Bishop wanted to remove all symbols of Christianity, marking the direction of Mecca, and installing a Muslim prayer room.

The Church of Sweden has voted to adopt a controversial new handbook which says masculine references to God, such as “He” and “Lord” should be scrapped so as to be more “inclusive”.

Despite heavy criticism from organisations including Royal Swedish Academy, on Thursday the church approved the new handbook with a large majority.

The Church Handbook — which was last updated in 1986 — sets out how services, baptisms, weddings and funerals should be conducted, in language, liturgy, theology and music, and is therefore central to the church’s activities.

According to local media, many priests have objected to directions in the new handbook regarding language, which have been added with the goal of making the church “more inclusive”.

This includes instructing clergy to refer to God in a gender-neutral fashion, without “unnecessarily” using the male pronoun “He”, or terms like “Lord”.

God should be referred to as “Mother” as well as “Father” in some prayers, according to guidelines in the manual, which gives the following as an example:

“God, Holy Trinity, Father and Mother, Son – Sister and Brother, and Spirit – Lifeguard and Inspirator, lead us to your depths of wealth, wisdom and knowledge”.

Inclusive

Sofia Camnerin, the deputy chair of Sweden’s Equmenia Church, defended “inclusive language” in the church, stating that the need for it “is based on an awareness of different types of discrimination and inequality in our society.”

“Referring to God as ‘Lord’ consolidates [gender] hierarchies and the subordination of women in a white, Western feminist context,” she argued in a blog.

“Liberation theologists, along with feminist and postcolonial theologians, have been crucial in identifying how legitimising hierarchies leads to violence and subordination,” she said.

But Priest Helena Edlund, who blasted the church as having shown “a total unwillingness to listen to criticism”, expressed concern over the new language guidelines.

“The risk is that we fail to notice the small changes and then gradually over time we find ourselves looking at drastic changes we never would have accepted if they were put to us immediately,” she told Världen Idag last year.

“Is it unlikely, for example, that in five years we will be praying ‘Our Mother Who is in Heaven …’ in our churches? A few years ago, this was called an impossibility, but the church handbook proposal makes it possible.”

It is not normal for joggers in a developed western country to be accompanied by armed police for their safety.

Residents of the Swedish city of Oskarshamn will now have the option to be accompanied by armed police officers while out jogging.

Oskarshamn police inspector Peter Karlsson said the programme was designed to ease the insecurities of those who wish to go jogging after dark. Karlsson, who came up with the idea for the programme, said police would form jogging groups and all those who were interested in joining the officers were welcome, SVT reports.

“We will adjust the pace entirely to those who come,” Karlsson said, noting the officers would jog as well as walk with residents who wanted to join.

Karlsson said that he had heard of many residents feeling insecure in the city: “It does not happen so much here, but people are influenced by events around the world and feel unsafe when it’s dark.” BreitBart

Residents of Oskarshamn in Sweden will now be accompanied by armed police officers while out jogging. How did Europe let this happen? pic.twitter.com/oGwauhys6r

ISIS considers Sufis heretics and deserving of Islam’s death penalty for those who deviate from the faith.

305 people slaughtered, 27 were children.

The terrorists who slaughtered 305 people at a mosque in Egypt yesterday were carrying an ISIS flag and wearing masks, it has been revealed.

Around thirty gunmen created an arena of death around the holy house by blocking off escape routes with burnt-out cars before gunning down the penned-in worshippers in a 20-minute massacre.

The public prosecutor’s office said today the gunmen, wearing masks and military-style uniforms, surrounded blocked windows and a doorway before setting off a bomb and opening fire with automatic rifles.

‘They numbered between 25 and 30, carrying the Daesh flag and took up positions in front of the mosque door and its 12 windows with automatic rifles,’ the statement explained, using an Arabic term for ISIS.

In the meticulously planned attack – the worst Islamist atrocity in Egypt’s modern history – the murderers reportedly gunned down civilians while screaming ‘Allahu Akbar’, causing them to stampede and jump out of windows to escape.

But when the worshippers – many of whom were Sufis, a mystical Islamic sect despised by Sunni jihadists – fled, they were caught in the trap and massacred.

President al-Sisi promised a ‘brutal’ response after the massacre.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared three days of mourning will begin today, with a special prayer service starting this morning.

In a televised speech the president pledged to ‘respond with brutal force’, adding that ‘the army and police will avenge our martyrs and return security and stability with force in the coming short period’.

He went on: ‘What is happening is an attempt to stop us from our efforts in the fight against terrorism, to destroy our efforts to stop the terrible criminal plan that aims to destroy what is left of our region.’

Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi vowed to respond to the attack with ‘brute force’

Several hours later Egyptian air force jets destroyed vehicles used in the attack and ‘terrorist’ locations where weapons and ammunition were stocked, an army spokesman said.

Video: Egyptian Warplanes Strike Military Cars After Mosque Attack

﻿

Sufi Muslims

The mosque where the massacre occurred is associated with Sufi Muslims, who have frequently been attacked by extremist Sunni jihadists.

They accuse them of polytheism – the greatest sin in Islam – because they seek the intercession of dead saints.

But in much of the Muslim world, Sufism has for centuries been accepted and practised by mainstream Muslims and Sunni Islam’s most important theologians.

The head of Al-Azhar, Egypt’s top Islamic authority, is a Sufi, as are many top clerics in the Muslim world.

They date their practices back to some of Mohammed’s companions and the early generations of ascetics who shunned the increasingly powerful Islamic empire for a life of prayer. DailyMail

The 2016 decision by the Supreme Court was a victory for the Little Sisters of the Poor. The Supreme Court ruling is not enough for California and Pennsylvania.

“We just want to be able to continue our religious mission of caring for the elderly poor as we have over 175 years,” said Mother Loraine Marie Maguire with the Little Sisters of the Poor, according to Townhall. “We pray that these state governments will leave us alone and let us do our work in peace.”

The Little Sisters of the Poor are returning to court after several states filed lawsuits against the religious exemption from the new Department of Health and Human Services rule, according to Becket, the non-profit law firm representing the Catholic nuns in California and Pennsylvania.

Last month, HHS handed down a new rule with a broad religious exemption for non-profits like the Little Sisters to prevent them from having to make available services in their healthcare plans that violate their faith, like the week-after pill.

California and Pennsylvania filed lawsuits a short time after the new mandate was issued to stop the religious exemption.

California’s lawsuit claims the new rule is unconstitutional because it singles out and harms women, blocking their Fifth Amendment rights to equal protection under the law. The suit also claims the rule change permits employers to discriminate against employees through their religious beliefs, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Millions of women could be denied needed contraceptive care against the advice of science, public health and medical professionals,” said Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro at a press conference at Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania’s clinic last month, according to The Inquirer.

The Little Sisters of the Poor are requesting the court intervenes to make sure they don’t have to go against their faith when providing healthcare plans.

“Becket has argued all along that the government has many ways to provide services to women who want them as well as protect the Little Sisters,” a case summary states on Becket’s website. “Neither the federal government nor the state governments need nuns to help them give out contraceptives.”

“We just want to be able to continue our religious mission of caring for the elderly poor as we have over 175 years,” said Mother Loraine Marie Maguire with the Little Sisters of the Poor, according to Townhall. “We pray that these state governments will leave us alone and let us do our work in peace.”

In what was hailed as a victory for the Little Sisters of the Poor in May 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ordered lower courts to once again review a case involving Obamacare’s contraception mandate.

The mandate in question required religious groups to pay for birth control and drugs that may cause abortions.

“The Supreme Court said that the Little Sisters are protected from having to pay these massive government fines or choose to violate their religious beliefs, and the Supreme Court accepted the admission from the government that the government can modify to be more respectful of religious liberty,” said Becket attorney Stephanie Barclay at the time.

The high court justices instructed both parties to work out a compromise that would eliminate any faith-based concerns.

Washington Post reporter Janell Ross gave a presentation at a secretive California gathering where Democratic politicians, liberal activists, and their biggest donors plotted the future of the progressive movement without notifying her superiors that she would be attending, according to a Post spokesman.

The Democracy Alliance went to great lengths to keep the identities of its members and guests confidential at its fall investment conference last week at the La Costa Resort, but the Washington Free Beacon obtained a detailed conference agenda that lists both events and featured guests.

Among them was Ross, a national reporter who closely covered the 2016 presidential campaign for the Washington Post and has since continued to cover the Trump administration…

Ross, whose panel was sandwiched by a talk with liberal billionaire George Soros and a message by Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) on Russian interference in the 2016 election, helped attendees explore questions such as: “What do progressives stand for?”,

The panel was framed in the agenda as a response to the 2016 election, in which Democrats were criticized for failing to understand the economic concerns in areas of the country carried by President Trump. FreeBeacon

This is not multi-culturalism it is discrimination. The institutional racism that the left speaks about with no proof can be found – with proof – at the BBC and the UK government Equality Act 2010.

A job advert offering “an exceptional and unique opportunity to train as a broadcast journalist” at the BBC says it is only open to non-white applicants.

Posted to the jobs section of w4mp — the Westminster political, media, and lobbying jobs portal — on Tuesday, the advert states plainly that the year-long, paid internship at the BBC World Service is “only open to candidates from a black, Asian or non-white ethnic minority background”.

The advert was placed by Creative Access, a registered charity which — as previously reported by Breitbart London — offers highly desirable, paid internships at top media companies, from which white people are excluded from applying.

“We help young people, from under-represented communities throughout the UK, to access creative careers,” says the organisation on its website. “Our vision is that in the longer term, our interns will progress to management positions, and in turn bring in others from under-represented communities in alongside them.”

Far from being underrepresented, the BBC’s Equality Information Report for 2017 showed that black and minority ethnic (BME) people make up 14.5 per cent of the corporation’s workforce, while comprising less than 13 per cent of Britain’s population at the 2011 census.

While the BBC claims the drive for greater diversity is to ensure its workforce “reflects the UK”, the company has committed to engineering “a workforce at least as diverse, if not more so, than any other in the industry”….

Under the Equality Act 2010, it became lawful for employers to engage in “positive action”, which Citizens Advice describes as taking “steps to help certain disadvantaged groups access employment or training”. BreitBart

This year, as the harvest draws near its close and the year approaches its end, awesome perils again remain to be faced. Yet we have, as in the past, ample reason to be thankful for the abundance of our blessings.

We are grateful for the blessings of faith and health and strength and for the imperishable spiritual gifts of love and hope. We give thanks, too, for our freedom as a nation; for the strength of our arms and the faith of our friends; for the beliefs and confidence we share; for our determination to stand firmly for what we believe to be right and to resist mightily what we believe to be base; and for the heritage of liberty bequeathed by our ancestors which we are privileged to preserve for our children and our children’s children.John F. Kennedy, 1961

Doctors in South Korea say a wounded North Korean soldier whose dramatic defection was caught on video is now conscious. The United Nations released new video from several security cameras that show the daring escape.

Poor health

At 5’6 tall but weighing 60kg (132lb), the soldier’s state is thought to be indicative of the poor health among North Korea’s troops.

Parasites

“We’re paying close attention to prevent possible complications,” said Lee [ surgeon Lee Cook-jong], who on Wednesday said “an enormous number of parasites” including roundworms had been found in the small intestine.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my 20 years as a physician,” he said, adding the longest worm he removed was 27 centimeters (11 inches).

Parasites, especially roundworms, are widespread in North Korea — as they are in many developing countries — where people eat uncooked vegetables that have been fertilized with human faeces, experts say. JapanTimes

Want to be miserable, resentful, and bitter? Few people do, and yet many people are. Why? Because many people have the one primary character trait that leads to unhappiness. And you need to avoid it. Nationally syndicated talk show host Dennis Prager explains.